Don’t become a poet

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

Warning: Do not, DO NOT! read this if you or your partner majored in art. Especially not if you both did. It will be your worst financial fears put to paper.

I apologize for the mental breakdown that is going to occur on these pages as I realize I just switched from a computer science major to Arts. You can’t eat arts! Iwill become the main character of this book and my boyfriend will be 40 and depressed and chat up his high school girlfriend because we sucked the life right out of each other and sent it off, withering, into the stratosphere.

Do not become a poet. You cannot portray any beauty in the world. Don’t start websites combining poetry and financial advice, especially not if you, as a poet, are mediocre at best. Don’t go out at night buying milk at, like, 9 dollars a gallon while you’re wife is sexting her new lover. Don’t buy lumber from said lover instead of confronting your wife rationally.

(And when you do become a poet, don’t fill your book with lots of sub-par poetry. No one cares. Also, don’t scream your political message into the face of your readers. We get it already, you don’t have to shout about it.)

But do read this book. It is a witty, heart wrenching portrait of what it feels like to lose everything; how quick we are to let marriages go, but cling to our children’s catholic schooling. It’s a mirror of anyone who’s ever felt they were just clinging onto what they wanted their life to be; and clinging on with the edges of worn down fingernails with closed eyes and they image of the perfect home, the perfect spouse, the perfect you. Why do we cling to the old life rather than stepping onto the ledge right beneath our feet?

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